Words on a page that might help me, or you, someday, maybe.

Car

Today I started looking for a new car. I’m twenty-three now, and in full time employment, but I’m still driving the same car that I got for my 18th birthday. It’s served me well over the years, and so far – he says whilst touching wood – it’s never broken down. I’ve had a bit of trouble getting it through MOTs here and there, but I’ve never ended up stranded on the side of a dual carriageway at 3am in the morning because my engine has over heated or anything.

So, I don’t necessarily need a new car, it’s more a case of I want a new car. I don’t have the money to just go out and buy a car, so I’m thinking of getting a bank loan to buy one. But I don’t know what car I want. The problem with that is twofold. 1) I don’t know anything about cars 2) I don’t know anything about loans.

I only really have a few requirements for the car that I end up with:

It’s got to be black.

It’s got to have five doors.

It’s got to have a bluetooth radio that my phone can sync with.

I don’t really care about engine size/type/power. I just want it to be… nice, I guess. I spend two hours in my car every day commuting to and from work. Since July I’ve driven 10,000 miles up and down.

From what I understand, doing high mileage means that it’s unreasonable/unfeasible to get a car on one of these hire purchase HP/PCP part car purchase thingies. So I guess the only option is to buy one outright with a loan, and then pay back the loan?

That sounds like a really grown up thing to do, and I’m not sure I’m ready for that kind of commitment. Although, I guess it’s not much different than the £50 I shell out every month for a phone bill. That’s effectively just paying back a £1000 loan on an iPhone.

As well as my list of three requirements, I’ve kind of worked out a budget and an ideal pay-back length, but I could still be persuaded over make and model. I’ve been looking at Ford Fiestas mainly, for no other reason other than the fact that my Grandad has a Ford and he’s always been pretty happy with them.

Like I said, I don’t know cars. But I want one. The car I have is the only car we ever looked at when we were in the market last time, and the main reason I wanted this car was because it has ‘343’ in the number plate, and that’s my favourite number. (It’s the only three digit cubic palindrome, by the way)

I remember the day we bought the Peugeot, I hadn’t passed my test yet but we took it for a test drive. My Dad sat in the passenger seat and my Mum sat in the back, and it was the most nervous I’ve ever been whilst driving a car. Looking back, I don’t think I got above five miles an hour.

I can’t be sure because the speedo and the rev meter were the opposite way round to the car that I learnt to drive in, so I saw ’20’ on the rev meter and assumed I was doing 20 miles an hour, not 2000 revs. Woops.

My parents bought me that car, and now I’m at the stage in my life where I can buy one myself.